Traffic congestion has been a major issue in many urban areas, and will continue to be so as the number of vehicles increases. Several approaches have been employed to alleviate traffic congestion and address the various problems associated with traffic congestion. For example, High Occupancy Vehicle (“HOV”) lanes or carpool lanes have been employed to encourage people to share rides, and thus decrease the amount of vehicles on the roads. However, it is neither practical nor convenient in many cases for people to share rides and the HOV lanes are not efficiently used to their full capacity. As another example, HOV lanes may be transformed into High Occupancy Tolling (“HOT”) lanes, and the HOT lanes may used by single-occupancy vehicles that are willing to pay a toll charge to save driving time.
Accordingly, more vehicles may use the HOV lanes that would otherwise have not been able to which may lessen traffic congestion on the corresponding non-HOV lanes or general purpose lanes. The toll charge may vary depending on the time of day (e.g., peak and non-peak periods) and/or the day of the week (e.g., weekdays and weekend). Although these approaches have been satisfactory for their intended purposes, they have not been satisfactory in all respects. One disadvantage is that these approaches are not effectively responsive to real-time changes in traffic conditions which can lead to traffic congestion problems. Further, these approaches are not predictive of oncoming traffic conditions that may also result in traffic congestion problems if not sufficiently addressed in time.